Medical Grade Peptides Versus The Gray Market

Peptides are suddenly the loudest word in wellness, and the internet is treating them like a shortcut you can order, mix, and inject at home. I’m not against peptides at all, but I am completely against the reckless way they’re being pushed. There are two very different worlds colliding right now: medical grade peptides prescribed through a provider and filled by a legitimate pharmacy, and gray market “biohacking peptides” sold through influencer funnels with questionable sourcing and zero real oversight. If you’ve been curious about GLP-1s, peptide stacks, or recovery compounds, this conversation gives you a safety-first framework before you follow the hype. 

We unpack why GLP-1 medications can be a powerful tool for obesity and metabolic disease when paired with strength training, nutrition, and habit change, and why they can turn dangerous when people chase rapid weight loss without protecting muscle. We also talk about the culture shift toward extreme thinness, and why muscle is a real longevity asset that you do not want to sacrifice for a faster scale drop. From there, we get practical about what “being monitored” actually means: labs, inflammation markers, hormone support, dosing, and making sure your body is primed rather than stressed and depleted. 

Then we go into the gray market problem that nobody wants to admit out loud: mislabeled products, wrong concentrations, self-reconstitution, and dosing errors that can multiply risk. We discuss BPC-157 as a high-interest example, including why “healing” signals may be the last thing you want to introduce if you have unknown inflammation or an undetected cancer risk. We also touch on AI accelerating peptide discovery and stacks, which makes discernment and medical supervision even more important. 

If you’re considering peptide therapy, listen first, share this with someone getting advice from social media, and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s changing next. After you listen, what’s your biggest question about peptides, GLP-1s, or sourcing safely?

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Transcript

Why Peptides Are Everywhere

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello friends, welcome back to the Armor Up Podcast. I'm your host, Lorraine Michaels, and I am excited today because I'm gonna talk to you about something that is exploding, it's everywhere. You may or may not have heard, I don't know how you would have not heard peptides. Peptides are everywhere, they're exploding, they are becoming the a if you don't know what a peptide is, maybe have you heard of GLP1s? Or have you heard of HRT? Or the list goes on and on because there are literally hundreds of peptides that are out there, and there are some that are blowing up like crazy. What is going on out there? What is being talked about, what is being told, what is being taught, what is the information that is out there is flooding everywhere, all over social media. So I really want to get into this because peptides are a tool and I'm totally not against them, I'm actually for them. However, I am for them being done in a controlled art way. So if you know me and you've followed me, you know that I have been in medicine for over 20 years. I've also been in the fitness industry for probably just as long, if not longer. Um, it's just that at once my career was in medicine, Western medicine. Uh, fitness was more of a hobby, fitness was more of a habit, and then um after 2020, I really started diving into functional medicine and functional nutrition, and fitness became more of a side hustle, and then it totally transformed, and now I have left western medicine and I am fully in fitness. My business is fitness, mindset, coaching, nutrition, all of that, and functional medicine. And so I am really into still, I have a love, love, love for medicine. I absolutely appreciate medicine. It is needed in certain circumstances, but I am fully on board with integrative medicine and functional medicine. Granted, Western medicine, like I said, does have a place, but that is not what we're talking about. What we are talking about today are peptides. And here is the big picture. They are exploding, but not in a controlled way. And right now they are splitting into two completely different worlds. And I'm going to speak up about it because it's driving me nuts. And like I said, there's a lot of information out there, but there is also a lot of misinformation. So the first thing, medical grade peptides, which is legit science. So you have two different ways of getting peptides: medical grade peptides through a provider, through a pharmacy. It's monitored. So think of things like your GLP1s for fat loss, metabolic diseases, hormone-regulating peptides. So not just your HRT, but there's different peptides that help regulate your hormones. And it's not just hormones, there are also peptides that help with it. There's different things, different peptides for disease targeting therapeutics, right? So that is the legit science side of it. And then there's the gray market peptides, the quote unquote biohacking peptides that you see influencers talking about and selling. Things like BPC 157, TB500, BJC. I mean, the list goes on and on. There's tons on the gray market that may be beneficial for you, yes. However, it is the way that you get them. It is how you are getting them, it's where they're being sourced. Most of them are unproven and they are 100% unregulated if you are getting them from the gray market. And so there's this tension between these two worlds, and because there's so much controversy in it. Now, like I said from the beginning of this podcast, is that do I believe in peptides? Absolutely, because our body naturally makes them, and as we get older, our body naturally isn't able to make them anymore or as much. And so, do I feel like you can introduce peptides to your routine, your daily life? Absolutely. As long as it is regulated and you know where you are getting them from, that you are getting them from a reputable pharmacy. They are pharmacy grade because they are tested. And so, this, I mean, I can go down so many rabbit holes on this, but I'm gonna try and keep this as concise as possible. So, what the latest research is actually saying, we know GLP ones are dominating everything and everyone is pushing them from pharmacy grade to the gray market because they are very expensive. But now that they are blowing up, the cost has come down. It's it's not a trend. The GLPs are not a trend. This is really becoming a full-scale medical takeover. If you are an overweight or obese person and you are using them, it helps with quieting the noise. It helps with appetite suppression when you start to implement a daily lifestyle routine. So movement, exercise, not just movement, but weight training, strength training, partnered with the lifestyle change and eating the right amount of calories, the right amount of protein, fats, and carbs with the movement, with the GLP, and you're working on your mindset, you're working on these new daily habits. The GLP one is a tool and it'll help you get to where you need to be therapeutically and in a healthy way so that you can come off the GLP and maintain a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle. Now, where the split in the road is, is people are using them that don't need to be using them. People are using them and they're not implementing those daily habits and routines, the nutrition, the exercise, and they're losing weight dramatically and they are losing muscle. A really scary good example would be Kelly Osborne. Kelly and her mom, um, they are walking skeletons right now, and it is so unhealthy. She is literally a bag of bones with skin on it, and it is so disheartening because there are so many other celebrities and people in the limelight that are dramatically losing weight, and we're going back to this culture of this just disgustingly skinny, unhealthy version of yourself, and it is so unhealthy because what I've talked about forever is muscle is the it's it's your organ of longevity. The more muscle you have, the better your metabolism is. And I'm not saying you have to be this gigantic bodybuilder, muscular woman. No, but you need to have a level of muscle on your body so that your metabolism is working and healthy and you look healthy and you you feel vibrant and there's vitality in you. But when you're abusing a GLP one or it's not monitored, or you're getting it from the black market or gray market rather, it can be very dangerous to your health. And so there's new GLP ones that are coming out. You know, I'm not gonna go down the list and name all of them, but there's there's lots of different ones. And then now they're coming into pill versions of it, which is fine. Like we can go down the rabbit hole of different therapies and different peptides and how there's injectables and oral ones and the efficacy of them, you know, some work different on different antagonists, some are better absorbed through your bloodstream or your adipose, which is your fat tissue, or some in your gut because your gut is so permeable, meaning like when you ingest something and if your gut microbiome is healthy, then you absorb it. So, food, for instance, if you eat whole foods, whole nutrition, nutrient-dense foods, and your gut is healthy, and the things that are supposed to pass through your gut, so absorb in your gut, when it's healthy, it absorbs things. So when you're eating whole nutritious foods, it absorbs the vitamins and the minerals and all the things that our body needs. Versus if your gut is not healthy, then it does not absorb it. So if you're taking something, a supplement, a vitamin, a peptide, and your gut is unhealthy, you just have really expensive penal and your body is not absorbing it. So there's a rhyme and a reason to it. Like you can't just take things because it's a trend and you think it's gonna help you lose weight or burn fat or whatever it is why you're taking it. You have to make sure your body is primed for it. There's so much more to peptides, and these peptides are doing way more than fat loss. And it's interesting to me because some of them have enough testing, and so pharmacies are deciding to take them on, and they're doing their own testing and they're doing their own research on it, and they are being monitored. And so different peptides have now moved over, as you know. Um, if you've heard some of them were banned, and now some of them you can get through a pharmacy or a provider. Those are the ones that have gone through the testing and have proven themselves to be effective, and they do work, and there is therapeutic value in it, and so there is a dosing, there is a way to monitor. So, this is the biggest thing. Peptides are a tool and they do work, but you have to be monitored. So, one of them that is driving me crazy that I keep seeing that does work and it is amazing, is BPC 157. And so it has gut healing properties, it has tissue regeneration properties, healing properties. So they say it for after um a surgery or an injury. So if you tear a tendon or you know, you strain a muscle, or there's or you have surgery, and you know, there is some type of injury, this peptide is phenomenal at healing. And also, if you are not getting tested, if you haven't had labs done and you don't know what your inflammation markers are, where those are at, if you have high inflammation in your body, or have not been tested your blood work, you haven't had your blood work and you don't know if there's cancer, you are at a huge risk for doing damage, for having an adverse effect with this peptide. So if you have a history of cancer, cancer in your family, and you haven't done any blood work or lab work, and you want to take this BPC 157 because it's got healing and gut restoration and all the good things that we hear about it, but yet you have an underlying cancer that you don't even know about, or you have inflammation that you don't know about, and you're introducing this peptide, you're literally growing your cancer. You're literally going to cause all the bad things that are in you to advance, to grow versus like someone like myself. I tore a tendon or I injured my bicep working out and I was taking a blend. Um, it was a stack that had BPC 157 in it, but I had my lab work done. So I knew my body was primed for it. I knew I was healthy enough. I know that there's nothing going on inside of me with my blood work that that peptide was going to do its job and it was monitored. So there's the pros and cons in it, and ultimately you're putting yourself at risk if you're wanting to, you know, go about this the right way or the wrong way. And I'll be honest with you, I have gone the right way and the wrong way because I wanted to try different peptides. I wanted to see what it was like, I wanted to know the effects of it. I wanted to try certain ones that were all the rage or whatever. And then after doing more research, come to find out some of these quote unquote reputable places where you're getting peptides from, they're just being pushed by influencers. And there's a company that I did get peptides from that came out and said that they did their own testing and they ordered these peptides from different companies and they had them tested because they had a pharmacy in a lab and all this stuff. So they got other peptides, brought them back and tested them. And the amount of between what they got, some of them come back, not even, it does not show up of what they say. So say they ordered um trazepatide, which is a GLP one, and it's supposed to be five milligrams. Well, they do testing on it, some of them come back not even at the dose that they said it was. So it was like five times the dose. So you think you're taking five milligrams, but really you're taking 25 milligrams. Some of them come back and it didn't even show that it was the peptide that they ordered. So you have this tremendous room for error of one, you might not even be getting the peptide that you ordered. Two, you might not be getting the dose that you ordered. You might be 5xing the dose and you were misdosing yourself. Three, these peptides, when they come to you, they are not dosed out. You have to reconstitute them yourself. You have to figure out your own dosing. You don't know that. You do not know what dose you should be on. That's why you need to be working with a provider or with someone like myself who partners with providers in pharmacies. Where I come in is I structure your workout for you. I structure your physical fitness plan, your nutrition. We do testing to make sure that you are ready. We do testing to make sure your hormones are good. We do testing to make sure there's no inflammation in you, that your blood levels are all within optimal range, not normal range, optimal range. And then we start working on your diet and nutrition. We start working on your physical fitness. And then, if you want, we bring in peptides. But I only work with providers and pharmacies so that you are getting the best treatment, the best care, the best for your physical fitness, mental cognition, everything. And so it's really aggravating to me to see all of these fitness influencers or just these influencers out there pushing peptides when you're not working with someone. When you're one, it's not with the provider, it's not even with a pharmacy. My caution to you is if you want to go down the peptide train, that's fine, but do it in a responsible way. Know what you're getting into. Don't just inject yourself with a peptide because you think it's gonna do X when you have no idea what you're really putting into your body. So I really want to emphasize that that there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. There's a right way to do it and a dangerous way to do it. And um, I just want to make sure that you have the right information and just because you get what you pay for. So if you're out there shopping for the cheapest available, think about that. Some of them give you what is it, a CO. It's basically a certificate saying that it was tested. You have no idea these places are not regulated. If you're working with a provider who is working with a pharmacy, these people are regulated. So you know what you're getting, and you are getting your blood work tested, so you know if it's even working or not. That's the other thing is these people have no idea if it's working or not, and because they're not getting tested. Okay, anyways, we've already talked about the efficacy of it, and I kind of touched on how they're not clean metabolically because they're not being tested and you don't know what is what is really in there. The other thing is AI is accelerating the the peptide discovery because people are just jumping on AI asking, you know, what peptide stack should I be on, or what are new compounds that are being created. Again, I just want to highly encourage you to work with a provider so that you know where it's coming from and what it is, and how they're supposed to test you and monitor you so you are getting the best bang for your buck, if you will. Some major trends to pay attention to the stacked peptides, um, the combos, like the Wolverine stack that has BPC 157, I think TB500, and GHKCU. It's a great stack because the BPC157, like I said, is for the tissue regeneration healing. It has the gut uh healing properties in it. Um, also the TB500 that has properties for healing as well. GHKCU is a copper peptide, so that's hair, skin, and nails. It's great, but again, you have to be monitored. You have to have your lab work done and make sure that your body is primed for it. And you're not just taking it to take it. Like I said, I took that when I injured my biceps. And it's not just a one and done. It took a couple of weeks of me taking it, um, doing the things that I needed to do in order to heal my bicep. So not working it out extensively. Um, red light therapy as well, and the peptides. Another trend is like I mentioned this earlier before was injections to pills. And that's gonna be a bigger push you're gonna start to see in the peptide space of going from injections to pills. And again, I am going to tell you that you have to make sure you are primed for it. You have to make sure that your body is ready for this. If your gut is unhealthy, if you have a leaky gut or IBS or any type of gut issue, then these peptides are not going to be absorbed. Your body is not ready for it. Another trend is this mainstreaming into everyday people. The prescriptions, they're rising everywhere. Um, the prescriptions for the GLP1s and this push for what's medically necessary to a lifestyle enhancement. And again, I go back to peptides are not for everybody, and I do not push them. And in fact, I don't promote them. It is something I offer, it is something that I am for. I'm definitely not against them, but it's not a lifestyle and it's not for everybody. You have to be ready for it, you have to be primed for it, and you can't just take them to take them. The GLP ones, again, and it is not for everybody. It is a tool and is not something that you should be on long term. That is a hill I will die on because I just see so many people that are pushing it because they're making money off of it. Because I see a lot of um, it's a lot of people that are making money off of it, and that's why they're pushing it. And it's it's just not for everyone. The price collapse is coming. So these patents are expiring, and pretty soon there's gonna be the more and more, it's like a double-edged sword. So the more the FDA is that is going to be involved in it. Obviously, there's gonna be price gouging, they're gonna try and get their hands in on everything, but to a certain extent, it's good because there's gonna it's gonna be heavily monitored, but there's gonna be lots of different variations, there's gonna be generic forms, so there's gonna be an increase and then there's gonna be a drop. So I would definitely the more access also means there's gonna be more misuse. So, like with the gray market aspect of it, you know, there was um a lot of different companies that do peptides and you can get them from them, but then there was a crackdown. And so you may or may not have heard that this one I think it was called peptide science. I can't remember what it was called, but anyways, it got shut down. There's gonna be more and more of that happening because they're not regulated. And so I don't know about you, but I would much rather get my stuff from a legitimate, you know, pharmacy that knows what they're doing. What is another trend? This biohacking culture. Oh, that's driving me crazy because people, these influencers, get on there on social media and are just talking about fat loss, recovery, anti-aging, and this demand of aesthetics and performance. It's not medicine. And so, like, I even struggle with the fine line and balancing between it because I want to be healthy. I don't want to be a vanity matrix. You know, I want I want to live optimal, I want to wake up and have energy and vitality. So my My interest is in the peptides that are going to help me, the peptides that are gonna optimize my health and my body. I'm not trying to do a quick fix. I'm not trying, I'm not doing GLPs, I'm not trying to lose weight and body fat. I do that through diet and nutrition and you know, lifestyle and physical fitness. The peptides are just an added bonus, a boost to help with energy or you know, brain cognition and focus. I'll I'll tell you, a really big one that I absolutely love is glutathione and NAD. Um, and those ones are from a pharmacy and it helps with energy, it helps with immunity, it helps with the mitochondria function. And so you don't have to have all these fancy ones. I'm not trying to, you know, push or change aesthetics. And I understand that some people are about that, and that's fine. I just want you to be safe about it, and I just want you to have a realistic view and approach about it and not be influenced by these people who are just saying these peptides for the sake of them making money. So some polarizing statements that I kind of want to talk about because I find myself on the line of some of this as well. Are peptides medicine or are they shortcuts? Well, yes, both. Are peptides medicine? No, I don't, I don't feel that. But are peptides like medically necessary or are they shortcuts? Yes, some of them are medically necessary. There are some peptides out there that are gonna help you. There's these peptides have been around for decades, decades. They've been used for, oh, what's one that was used for patients that had AIDS? Ipamerelin, epimerelin, and tesimeralin. Um, they patients that have AIDS were using that to help with growth hormone stimulation because they have lost their appetite and it helps with that. It helps with building muscle and the your IGF factor, I think it is. I can't remember, don't quote me. I can't remember right now. But, anyways, it helps with that the appetite and your human growth hormone. So it's it's not a human growth hormone, is it's not a steroid, but it helps, it reacts on that agonist to help stimulate that. Um, because it is a hormone produced by your pituitary gland, and that helps with appetite and hunger, your hunger signals, anyways. Or are they shortcuts? Yes, there are some that are um people are using as a shortcut because they don't want to put in the work, they don't want to do the things that are necessary, so they want to take a peptide. Hence, some people that are abusing GLP1s that do not need to be on a GLP one, but they want to be tiny. It's just unhealthy. I talked about the gray market problem. I've blown your ears off about it. You just really need to be careful. Basically, if you are getting a peptide and it is not from a pharmacy or from a prescriber, it is from the gray market, and you are at risk of misdosing, you are at risk of not even putting in the right peptide into your body. There's a huge warning against that. I'm telling you right now, you have to be careful. There's immune reactions, cardiac risks, cancer concerns. And I'm not saying this to fear-monger you. I'm letting you know that if it is not monitored, you are putting yourself at risk. Bottom line: there is no such thing as a miracle drug. At the end of the day, it all boils down to your daily lifestyle choices, your nutrition, your fitness. And that's why I work so closely with my clients and with other providers to make sure that I'm not just giving you a workout plan, a workout routine, or macros. I'm working with you one-on-one, whether it's in person or online. We are working together to make sure that you are primed, your labs look great, the right program, the right nutrition. Ethically, I cannot condone you using peptides from the gray market. That's why I work with providers and why I work with pharmacies. And we make sure that you are healthy and in the right place to be using peptides if that is the route you want to go. But peptides are not a thing that are going away. It's definitely in the fitness industry, and they are gonna be more prevalent, probably easier accessible. More are going to be released that are from a pharmacy, right? So you're gonna have more access to it. Hopefully, people will go that route and start working with a provider and making sure that their labs look great and they're ready for whatever peptide that they want to implement or introduce into their lifestyle, into their routine. But as always, guys, if you have any questions, message me or email me. Um, you can find my information in the show notes. You can contact me, send me an email, you can message me on social media. I would love to have a conversation with you. But yeah, I'm always gonna be coming at you with the latest and greatest, and you know my stance on everything. I'm very, very clear on that. Because I want you to be the healthiest version of yourself, whether that's physically, mentally, emotionally, because you were divinely created for a divine purpose and there was no mistake in you. I'm here to cut out all the BS and let you know from a medical standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint, from you know, a fitness standpoint, I will never shoot you in the wrong direction. Things are always changing, medicine's always changing, you know, functional medicine, functional uh integrative medicine is ever evolving and coming out with new stuff. Uh, just be careful of where you get your information. But until next time, guys.